Wednesday Morning Links

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- Erin takes on Jack Mintz' latest set of fact-free tax-cut cheerleading, this time by pointing to Mintz' own apparently-forgotten words about the optimal tax level:

He claims that the revenue loss will be “relatively small” or “relatively insignificant” without actually suggesting a dollar amount (pages 3 and 20). By comparison, the Department of Finance (see Table 3.5), the opposition parties, and even the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters estimate that this cut will reduce annual corporate tax revenues by $6 billion.

The “relatively small” claim has a footnote citing the 2007 Tax Competitiveness Report, also authored by Mintz. That report referenced “the tax-revenue-maximizing rate of 28 percent” (pages 0, 14 and 22).

The proposal Mintz now finds so odious is to roll back the federal rate to 18%. With a 10% provincial rate, that would mean a combined rate of 28%!

So, today’s report alleges that there is “little, if any, revenue cost” (page 20) to cutting well below what Mintz himself identified as the “tax-revenue-maximizing rate.” (Finance Canada and I think the revenue-maximizing rate is far above 28%.)

- And even better, Erin is at least getting a few lines in edgewise in CP's coverage of Mintz. Though four lines compared to at least as many full articles dedicated to Mintz is far less than what's needed to provide any semblance of balance to the discussion.

- Carol Goar criticizes the opacity of over a hundred billion dollars in tax breaks currently littering Canada's public policy:

(I)t would be salutary to scrap some (tax breaks). The trouble is neither MPs nor citizens have enough information to evaluate or debate them. Parliamentarians can’t hold the government to account for them. Taxpayers can’t ask that an outdated or inequitable tax expenditure be scrapped in order to preserve a valued program or service.

It’s wrong that these tax preferences are not part of pre-budget consultations. They have an important bearing on the cost of government and the size of the deficit.

It is regrettable that Canadians have to rely to guesstimates and pocket-calculator figures. But what is most disturbing is that a multi-billion component of the nation’s finances is off-limits to the people who pay Canada’s bills.

- Finally, Terence Corcoran, it's time to step away from the Kool-Aid. (Or else provide some evidence for the stunning assertion that innovation has been universally "repressed" since time immemorial.)